Gabriel Kriz doesn’t like running. But dashing up dozens of flights of steps in skyscraper stairwells? Not a problem.
The 22-year-old staircase racer and on-again Ohio State student started his racing career in Cleveland in 2006 at the “Tackle the Tower” competition. He placed 29th out of about 1,000 competitors who ran up 42 floors of the Terminal Tower.
Kriz isn’t taking classes at OSU this quarter so he can focus on work — he is a full-time employee at Espress-OH at the Ohio Union — and training for a Jan. 30 race at the Aon Center in Chicago.
He said his secret is to climb two steps at a time and use rails to incorporate more than just the lower body. A student in human nutrition and dietetics and a stair racing veteran, Kriz has had time to develop his technique.
Growing up in Cleveland, he worked at the OMNI Fitness Club, where friends and colleagues told him about staircase racing.
After his debut success in Cleveland, he traveled to Chicago for his next two stair climbing events. In November 2006, he raced up the tallest building in the country, Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower. At age 18, he ran up 103 floors — a total of 2,109 steps — in 23 minutes and 16 seconds.
“When I got to the top of the Sears Tower, I felt so good after finishing that I felt I could take the elevator down and do it all over again,” he said. “That’s when I knew I wanted to keep doing this.”
Nearly two months later, Kriz made the voyage back to Chicago to race up the steps of the Aon Center Building and had his best performance yet. He ran up 80 floors — 1,643 steps — in a little more than 15 minutes and placed first in his age group.
But he didn’t accomplish it without a struggle.
“I was getting very tired at the top and I was coughing a lot,” Kriz said. “I was getting a little sick and I was coughing up blood. I thought I would have to stop, but I just kept going.”
The race caused a minor knee injury, leading him to take a break from the sport.
Therapists told Kriz that he had trained too hard without building up enough muscle in his knee.
After treating the injury — and seeking his mother’s approval — he returned to training. This time he is focusing on building muscle strength.
“I think he’s approaching (training) differently now,” said Kriz’s mother, Sue. “I’m surprised he’s started it up with such intensity again. It shows me that he missed it.”
Keisha Trott, Kriz’s girlfriend, is supportive of the sport but says she would never do it herself.
“I’m just like, why would anyone in their right mind want to race up stairs?” said Trott, a third-year in English. “To me it’s kind of weird, but to each his own.”
Kriz does most of his training at the RPAC, using Stairmaster machines and lifting weights. In Cleveland, he has been known to call hotels and ask to run up their stairs.
“It makes for some pretty interesting phone calls,” Kriz said.
His goal is to be able to run all of the steps between Ohio Stadium’s bleachers.
Even with Kriz’s dedication to training, some of his friends and coworkers did not know he participated in the sport.
“It wouldn’t surprise me. He seems like he does like, a lot of ridiculous, active things like that,” said Christina Dadurian, a second-year in psychology and Kriz’s colleague at Espress-OH. “He would totally be into something obscurely athletic.”
Another coworker, Heidi Hamblin, an undecided second-year, said she did not know about Kriz’s pastime because he doesn’t talk about himself often.
Roger Garland, executive chef of the Ohio Union and finisher of a staircase race, heard about Kriz’s hobby and took an interest in it.
My wife and I “just walked, but he actually does the running,” Garland said. “I respect how hard it was to do that.”
Kriz said his family and friends are supportive but joke about his hobby.
“They think I’m crazy, honestly,” he said, laughing. “That’s probably it. They’re like, ‘Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you trying to hurry up so much?'”
